Sunday, June 15, 2014

"They just get richer"

The story of high-frequency trading is, more or less, the same story that is being told by Thomas Piketty. Lewis is about narrative and Piketty is all about analysis and data, but these two big books about modern capitalism are both accounts of how capital became more and more ruthless; how the very richest got even richer. You could well see Flash Boys as a case study in the story of Capital in the 21st Century. ‘It is tempting to believe that people who think this way eventually suffer their comeuppance,’ Lewis wrote about Wall Street, in his epilogue to the 2010 reissue of Liar’s Poker. ‘They don’t. They just get richer. I’m sure most of them die fat and happy.’